They should all get a second chance

To be honest I'd give all of the players another chance. Yes, it would be a spectacular thing to do from Warren Gatland's point of view after that performance.

He's going to have to get a result against Wales now and that's going to be very difficult. Wales are going to come into the game with their confidence very high, having put so many points on the board against Romania during the week.

From Ireland's point of view, everything just seemed to go wrong in Murrayfield. I think the fact that the guys had been on the Lions Tour was a factor in the end.

We had more players involved than they did and I believe that it allowed Scotland to be better prepared than we were for the match.

They really only had one player involved, Tom Smith. As a result, I think that on the pitch they looked a lot fresher than we did. But there are no excuses. It seemed like we couldn't get out of second gear no matter how hard we tried.

It was just bad.

Everyone under-performed and the players would know that. Sure, Ian McGeehan is a shrewd coach but you can't make excuses. Everything just seemed to be wrong.

We didn't do particularly well in the lineouts and we didn't have that much clean ball to work with. The unfortunate thing was that, given the strength of our backline, we were unable to generate any quick ball out to them. In the end, there wasn't really a lot they could do. It was just too slow and Ireland were not allowed have any options.

Players like Budge Poutney are very good at killing the ball and slowing it down. That was to Scotland's advantage and that's what they aimed to do.

Poutney did it very well for his team. At times, they bordered on being offside but it is the type of game they play, very strong at rucking and able to slow the ball down in getting to Ireland's back-line. Against us, they did ruck well. They slowed down our ball and you can't play rugby if you can't get quick ball. That was very frustrating.

Outhalf Gregor Townsend's style of play is to attack the gain-line. He is a high-risk player but can make things happen for himself and he can create things for the players around him. Scotland really did their homework on us in midfield.

Our guys didn't look that fit either and there were too many turnovers in the tackle. After the tackles we didn't have the usual number of Ireland shirts in support and blowing over the ball to create second and third-phase play. As well as that I think we should have been putting in a few Garryowens early on just to vary the play.

I think Shane Horgan has played well on the wing, but I hadn't seen him play in the centre before. It is a shame though about Rob Henderson and Brian O'Driscoll because they were playing so well last season. We don't really have the pool of players like England have. We have four or five really good players in the squad. If anything happens to them then we struggle to replace the quality.

I think everyone under-performed and no one was particularly outstanding. We started to improve when Peter Stringer and David Humphreys came on. Ronan O'Gara didn't kicked particularly well which was disappointing for him because he can kick well. That put him under a lot of pressure.

Maybe Stringer will come back in for the Welsh match. What he does well is the service. He can get the ball wide very quickly for players to run on to. I think Guy Easterby was picked to run around the fringes but it just didn't happen for him.

Another option is to bring David Wallace back again and maybe look at the centre.

Before the match, building towards the next World Cup was a good thought process. But now Warren Gatland needs a result against Wales, so he might have to think of bringing a player like Mick Galwey into the side.

But at the end of the day the whole team under-performed, not just one or two people. I'd give them another chance.

(In an interview with Johnny Watterson)